


Splitting Image

by heavvymetalqueen



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-29
Updated: 2016-06-29
Packaged: 2018-07-19 00:39:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7337551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heavvymetalqueen/pseuds/heavvymetalqueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sunny doesn’t look like either of them, for obvious reasons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Splitting Image

Neither of them particularly likes the mirror. They both look like splitting images of people long gone, by their own hand, that they’d rather not be reminded of on a daily basis. 

In their long years on the run, jumping from cabin to bunker to one-room apartment with a mattress on a warped linoleum floor, mirrors are few and in between. Cracked, faded, dusty enough to muffle their features when they needed to be used. Even the Nomad’s bathroom mirror is small and utilitary. Snake prefers to shave with a small pocket mirror, or not at all. Otacon rarely gets more than a scruffy stubble anyway.

Sunny doesn’t look like either of them, for obvious reasons. The more she grows the more she morphs into her beautiful mother, just with softer, kinder eyes. 

Yet she has absorbed so many of their mannerisms, the little things that make them _them_ , beyond the facial features. Otacon’s slight stammer when she’s nervous. Snake’s frown when she’s concentrating on something complex. The way she walks, the way she talks, the way she smiles.

Even now that she’s almost a woman, that she has many outside influences - when she’s home from work for a few days, Hal’s heart skips in his chest sometimes. She plays in the yard with that terrifying cyborg wolf of hers with the same deep belly laugh David only had for his huskies - and Hal, sometimes, when they were younger and stronger and less weary. 

David is long gone, and so is everybody that looked like a splitting image of him. Hal is never going to see his face again. 

But sometimes Sunny’s pale eyebrows will knit together while her slender fingers dance on a keyboard, she will stretch or walk or smile or scratch the back of her head _just so_ \- and David is still right there, clearer than any mirror or clone.

It’s not quite enough to make up for the years they were cheated out of - but almost.


End file.
